Stuck In A Pagoda With Motoko Aoyama

The following was just sent to myself (amongst)) others from Stooges bassist Mike Watt. Please disseminate this far and wide.

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if anyone has information, ANY INFORMATION!
please, please, PLEASE as soon as possible contact
Eric Fischer at:
nycentral13@gmail.com
cell phone: +1 646 932 1907

PLEASE FORWARD AS FAR AND WIDE AND AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE!!!

IGGY AND THE STOOGES
EQUIPMENT STOLEN ON AUGUST 4, 2008
OUTSIDE THE EMBASSY SUITES HOTEL
208 SAINT ANTOINE OUEST,
MONTREAL, QUEBEC, CANADA

all equipment was in a rented penske 15 foot yellow truck
with u.s. (michigan) license plate number AC46493
and the theft had to have happened in the morning,
between 6:30 and 7:30 am

there’s a web page at:

http://www.hootpage.com/stoogesstolenstuff/stoogesstolenstuff.html

that will soon have pictures and updates to more stuff found missing

Item Country of Origin Serial Number

Red roadcase containing: USA No serial number
Red Gibson 1963 EB-3 bass (this is mike watt’s bass!) USA
No serial number

Black roadcase containing: USA No serial number
Reverend Flying V guitar – Volcano black USA #08001

Black roadcase containing: USA No serial number
Reverend Orange guitar USA 03416 ZSL7

Black fibre case containg: USA No serial number
Gibson red SG short scale bass USA No serial number

Black roadcase containing: USA No serial number
Marshall Vintage/Modern Amplifier UK M-2007-07-0926-2 RoHS

Black roadcase containing: USA No serial number
Marshall Vintage/Modern Amplifier UK M-2007-07-0927-2 RoHS

4x Marshall 4×12 Cabinets (with Tuki cover) UK #1 Slant:
M-2007-05-0149-0

4x Marshall 4×12 Cabinets (with Tuki cover) UK #2 Straight:
M-2006-49-0380-0

4x Marshall 4×12 Cabinets (with Tuki cover) UK #3 Slant:
M-2007-05-0150-0

4x Marshall 4×12 Cabinets (with Tuki cover) UK #4 Straight:
M-2006-49-0381-0

Orange Calzone road case containing:
Guitar pedal board and pedals USA/Japan No serial number
Assorted leads USA/UK No serial number
2x mic stands Germany No serial number
Assorted strings and spares USA No serial number
plus:
2x Boss TU2 Chromatic Tuner
Boss CH1 Super Chorus
Fulltone OCD Overdrive
Crybaby Wah
Peterson Strobo-Stomp Tuner Pedal
Whirlwind A/B Boxes
Whirlwind Cable Tester
and many many istrument cables
various tools ( screwdrivers, soldering iron, pliers, etc… )
tambourine and maracas

Cardboard box containing:
Assorted replacement drum heads USA No serial number

Gretsch Silver Sparkle Catalina drum kit USA No serial number
26″ Kick Drum No serial number
13″ Rack Tom No serial number
18″ Floor Tom No serial number
4x Cymbal Stands No serial number
1x Snare Stand No serial number
1x Hi Hat Stand No serial number
1x Drum Throne No serial number

Eden D810 Bass cabinet USA D810RP4 0703E5001

Eden D810 Bass cabinet USA D810RP4 0703E5002

Cardboard box containg:
Eden VT300 Bass amplifier USA 0601E5115

Cardboard box containg:
Eden VT300 Bass amplifier USA 0507E5033

Floor Fan CHINA No serial number

Floor Fan CHINA No serial number

Green clamshell suitcase containing:
Yamaha snare drum JAPAN No serial number
Yahama kick pedal JAPAN No serial number
Zildjian Mega Bell cymbal USA No serial number
Zildjian 15″ Hi-Hats USA No serial number
3x Zildjian 18″ 19″ 20″ crash medium cymbals USA No serial number

Brown Epiphone guitar case:
Black Epiphone EB3 short scale bass KOREA F300503

PLEASE FORWARD AS FAR AND WIDE AND AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE!!!

if anyone has information, ANY INFORMATION!
please, please, PLEASE as soon as possible contact
Eric Fischer at:
nycentral13@gmail.com
cell phone: +1 646 932 1907

can you believe this shit?

Memes by both Misa and pengie within the IW blogosphere have turned up. I’m doing Misa’s first since pengie’s seems to call for a more detailed explanation and my response won’t be ready to be posted on here until later this weekend.

1. What was the first Japanese song that you ever listened to?
“Kiss In The Dark” by Pink Lady. I still have the 45 somewhere in my house.

2. Did it inspire you to like that group/singer, or did it turn you away?
I liked them a lot. Never bought the full album though… I’m surprised that I haven’t rectified that by looking for the album on eBay, but I do have a double-CD anthology of Pink Lady now!

3. What is the one song that you have been listening to for the longest time?
Both of Whiteberry’s albums.

4. What group/singer have you liked the longest?
Group: Whiteberry. Singer: Yui Horie.

5. What is the song with the most plays on your iTunes/media player? As of today, Morning Musume’s “Egao YES Nude” with 140 plays.

6. Is that song your favorite?
Definitely one of my many favorites. “Resonant Blue” is right behind it with 136 plays.

7. If not, what is?
No answer.

8. Is there any one group that you can listen to all/most of the songs by? If so, who?
Morning Musume/Hello! Project.

9. What is your favorite agency?
Some might say Hello! Project/UFW but I don’t have a “favorite” agency.

10. What is your favorite group/singer?
It’s a tie between The Stooges and Morning Musume.

(Image courtesy Alternative Tentacles Records)

From the Boston Phoenix:

As you may have heard, conservative attack-radio douchebag Michael Savage went postal again the other day, responding to the news of Ted Kennedy’s brain tumor by taking to the airwaves with a rant that once again revealed the vicious, inhuman gutlessness of this country’s so-called silent majority — students of the P. Diddy Institute for Higher Etymology would surely recognize this as a prime bit of bitch-assedness. First he played clips of Ted Kennedy singing, interspersed with (Kennedy in-law) Arnold Schwarzenegger’s infamous “It’s not a tumor” clip. “The poor guy’s been suffering for years, you know?,” Savage said of TK. “Unfairly he’s been accused of alcoholism, but we see now that it was something much more deep-seated.”

Then he did something even more unforgivable: he played Dead Kennedys’ “California Uber Alles,” compounding the sacrilege by actually singing along. (Click on the media player above to hear the full clip, courtesy of MediaMatters.) A convergence of loony-fringe hatemongering and punk rock shibboleth-busting: is this where it all ends up?

We doubt that anyone would be ignorant enough to think that Savage is anything approximating an actual Jello Biafra fan, nor that anyone would be silly enough to think that Jello Biafra was in any way supportive of Savage. But we wanted to get Jello’s thoughts on the matter anyway, so Phoenix Editor Lance Gould raised him on the phone. Here’s what Jello had to say:

I haven’t read the details yet, but I’m aware of what Michael Savage did. Obviously he took my song way the hell out of context and did it deliberately. But the bigger issue is Savage himself and how the hell he gets away with stuff like saying this, and saying that people with AIDS should be put in concentration camps. And then when people protest at the station, he calls on his own listeners to come down and beat them up.

It scares the shit out of me that the most popular radio talk-show hosts are all foaming-at-the-mouth, ultra-bigoted blabbermongers whom only North Korea or the Nazis could love.

But like it or not, Savage is the third-most popular radio-talk show host in this country behind Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. Nobody from the other side is represented or promoted well enough by the big right-wing-owned radio networks to compete. That’s one of the ways they mindfuck the country into being so dumb they vote for people like George Bush, Mitt Romney and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The real issue here is why aren’t the big candidates calling for media reform? Once upon a time there was a law on the books called the Fairness Doctrine, and it said that if somebody like Savage or Limbaugh or that skull woman Ann Coulter said something completely fucked up and dishonest on the air, somebody else was allowed to come on the air and reply to them without being told to shut up every 15 seconds by a power clown like Bill O’Reilly. That law was on the books for 50 years but was allowed to expire in the late ’80s when a Democratic-controlled congress failed to override President Reagan’s veto of the law.

The damage was further compounded when your friend and mine Bill Clinton rammed through the Telecommunications Act of 1996, further deregulating how many radio stations and media outlets one corporation can own and what they can do with them and they greenlighted their long-held agenda to throw public interest out the window. And the volume and impact of the Rush Limbaughs and Michael Savages multiplied exponentially with nobody on the other side being allowed to reply. In large areas of rural and small town America, this is the only radio anyone is exposed to. That’s the problem. We need to bring back the Fairness Doctrine. John Kerry had a golden opportunity to fire back at the Swift Boat liars and use that as a platform to rally the public to demand media reform. But true to form, he was too chickenshit to do it.

My favorite J-Pop blog celebrates its First Anniversary on May 9th. Unfortunately, I have no cupcakes to commend the occasion with…

But what’s this?

For Pink Wota, and especially for my dear friend Vee, some pink vinyl from the “Punk Wota”:

It’s the double-vinyl edition of one of MotokoAoyama.com v1.0′s Top Albums of 2006:

Now, let’s dance:

For some mysterious reason, I started getting Entertainment Weekly delivered to my house months ago. I have no idea how this happened, but I’m not complaining – it’s a good Friday early-evening leaf-through, but when I discovered that Stephen King has been doing a monthly column, The Pop of King, for the weekly magazine, I started looking forward to every fourth Friday to see what he had to say about pop culture.

This week, he wrote about his “real Top 20” songs. “Real” as in they’re the ones he plays the most on his computer through iTunes when he’s writing. I actually do my listening on my iPod instead, but my iTunes keeps track as I’m always adding and removing albums and songs and podcasts.

I liked the idea of a Top 20 article based on one’s iTunes statistics enough to write about my own, but figured I’d go one – or is that five? – better than Mr. King and do a Top 25. Hell, doesn’t iTunes have a Top 25 Most Played smart playlist on every new installation of the program? (They do; I’ve long since done Top 100 and Top 500 playlists on there just out of curiosity; I’m sure a Top 1000 will happen at some point!)

I don’t know how many of these will surprise longtime Pagoda readers like I was surprised to see “Candida” or “Too Late To Turn Back Now” (very good choice in the latter tune, Stephen), but, like Mr. King said in his own column about his own list, the computer does not lie.

25. “SHABONDAMA” – Morning Musume (44) – One of the first Morning Musume singles I ever bought. I didn’t know it at the time, but my future favorite MoMusu made her debut on this track. 15-nin MoMusu is one of my favorite eras of the band so far.

24. “MISS LOVE TANTEI” (Rock In Musume remix) – W (Double You) (44) – No slag against the original version of what would, sadly, be Aibon and Nono’s last single (on my machine, its in the lower Top 50), but there’s something about this wild indie-rock fan remix that reminds me equally of both Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr. that had me gravitate more towards this version.

23. “I WANNA BE YOUR DOG” (Sessions@AOL version) (44) – Iggy Pop (with The Stooges) (44) – Recorded in 2003 to promote Skull Ring, this live-in-studio version isn’t available on iTunes anymore for some odd reason, but a little searching through YouTube will locate the actual video from this session.

22. “NIGHTS IN WHITE SATIN” – The Dickies (44) – The Dickies pretty much made their name taking cover songs and amping them up considerably (although it should be pointed out that lead singer/keyboardist Leonard Graves Phillips is one hell of a songwriter himself). This is one of their best rearrangements, taking a minor-key 6/8 Moody Blues chestnut and making it a joyous major key 4/4 rocker. Probably one of my all time favorite cover versions.

21. “RIOT INDUSTRY” – Cobra Verde (44) – Probably the most obscure thing on the list. Underground indie-rock darlings, this is probably Cobra Verde’s best known song and the opening track of their 2003 album Easy Listening, thanks to a video that has Mike Watt, George Wendt, and Rudy Ray Moore guest-starring in it. Watt himself liked the song so much that he did it as an encore selection on his 2004 tour.

20. “ROBOKISS” – W (Double You) (45) – I don’t know what kissing a robot that looks like Ai or Nozomi would be like, but there’s two lucky bastards out there that… um, never mind, I’m not repeating that joke from Cake Day again.

19. “BLACK NIGHT” – Deicide (45) – America’s most notorious death metal band leaves the Deep Purple classic black and blue.

18. “FIRST KISS” (Brazilian Mix) – Aa! (46) – I don’t know why this metal-based fan remix is called the “Brazilian Mix”, as it sounds more to me like Emperor than Sepultura, but this last (to date) contribution by the pseudonymous “#13 Root” to his long-running Evil Morning project always has me picturing Reina, Airi and Miyabi trying to hold on to their mic stands for dear life while Ishahn and company blast away behind them.

17. “PLETHYSMOGRAPH” – Jello Biafra and The Melvins (46) – The former Dead Kennedys singer and primary songwriter teaming up with the Seattle-bred punk/grunge pioneers for the albums Never Breathe What You Can’t See and Sieg Howdy! was pure genius.

16. “MAKE THE WEATHER” – The Waitresses (49) – Not as well known as “I Know What Boys Like” or “Christmas Wrapping”, but in my opinion, a superior song to both. The first single off their second album, this song should have made them a bigger band, but their label Polydor, as they were wont to do back then, dropped the ball. Seeing the video a few times on MTV back in the day still triggered me to look for the song when I first had iTunes.

15. “TROLLIN’” – The Stooges (49) – The opening track of their great reunion album The Weirdness. I was so glad to hear them do this song live when I saw them in concert.

14. “KOI NO VACANCE” – W (Double You) (52) – Their cover of the Peanuts’ classic – and the rest of Duo U&U – had me start an ongoing investigation into older Japanese pop music that continues to this day.

13. “CALL ME WHAT YOU LIKE (IF YOU LIKE ROCK-N-ROLL)” – Puffy AmiYumi (54) – The great English-language rocker from the US version of Splurge. A real record label would have pushed this song to the hilt.

12. “TACHIRI KINSHI” – Whiteberry (55) – Pop-punk at its most brilliant, no matter what the language. They’ve got guitars and rugby uniforms and they’re coming to kick your asses.

11. “HOW DO YOU LIKE JAPAN?” – Morning Musume (59) – A great album and concert opener and, at least according to iTunes, my favorite MoMusu album track.

10. “PISTOL PACKIN’ MOTHER FUCKER” – Hank Williams III (59) – From the “unreleased” and appropriately titled This Ain’t Country album, the tracks have circulated through file sharing since the original master scared the shit out of Curb Records.

9. “MORE THAN GOOD” – MX-80 Sound (70) – From their second album Crowd Control, now easily found on iTunes and eMusic along with their first album Out Of The Tunnel as the CD Out Of Control. MX-80 dropped the “Sound” from their name for that CD, but I still call them that here. This was grunge before there was even grunge (the album first came out in 1980 on Ralph Records).

8. “KANASHIMI TWILIGHT” – Morning Musume (71) – Yossi and Mikitty’s last single with the band, and they went out rocking. I’m surprised that I haven’t sat down and tried to tab this song out.

7. “POISON” – Johnny Angry (73) – There’s a slight bit of bias on my appreciation of this tune. The person singing lead and playing the Hammond B-3 organ on here is my pal Pete Mazich, who some of you might recognize as the organist on Mike Watt’s The Secondman’s Middle Stand album. Check them out at their MySpace page, http://www.myspace.com/johnnyangrymusic. It’s pretty cool that right now two angry breakup songs – this one and “Kanashimi Twilight” – are back to back on here.

6. “HELLO! ORANGE SUNSHINE” – Ai+BAND (74) – Great cover of the JUDY AND MARY hit by this apparently dormant-at-present female-fronted quartet. Thankfully, the album this is on, Hello! We Are Ai+BAND!!, is still in print.

5. “RESONANT BLUE” – Morning Musume (77) – I’ve only played their new single how many times so far?

4. “KOKO NI IRUZEE!” – Morning Musume (77) – Brilliant ska-punk from Japan’s sweethearts. The strings add to the frantic pace rather than detract from it.

3. “I WRITE SINS NOT TRAGEDIES” – Panic! At the Disco (80) – The only thing remotely close to a badmouth I will ever say about P!ATD is that their Mike Nesmith-esque habit of song titles that appeared nowhere in the song’s lyrics made it initially difficult to find out what this song was when I first heard it.

2. “JOINING A FAN CLUB” – Puffy AmiYumi (81) – I knew that frequent Puffy collaborator Andy Sturmer was in Jellyfish, but didn’t know that this was originally a Jellyfish song until I stumbled across it on iTunes. Giving this song a second shot at life via Ami and Yumi was a wise move.

1. “EGAO YES NUDE” – Morning Musume (127) – One of their best singles, ever. Prime MoMusu.

Well, folks, the reaction to the first Pagoda Podcast was pretty good and very encouraging, so that means I’ll be giving these a shot whenever I have a good idea for a track list or concept. I especially want to thank Vee for the support and Henkka for the shoutout he gave on his own fine debut podcast. It’s pretty cool to learn that my own work here in the J-Pop Blogosphere is having an influence on folks. I’m happy to officially announce that this here podcast can now be both subscribed to and searched out through iTunes – just type either “Pagoda Podcast” or “CJ Marsicano” to find it. Oh, also, apparently the host company for the podcast has changed its name since I uploaded the first podcast there. Instead of Podshow.com they are now Mevio.com so the new URL for the podcast is http://pagodapodcast.mevio.com. The other one still works but that shit threw me off a bit. That’s showbiz!

Direct DL | Show Page @ PagodaPodcast.Mevio.com

I admittedly wasn’t planning on doing a new Pagoda Podcast so soon but given what today is, I had to do a particularly special episode. Six years ago today I woke up to learn the horrible news that Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes from TLC had died in a car accident in the Honduras. I forget how the accident happened but I do remember hearing that she went through the windshield and died instantly, which was doubly creepy because D. Boon from the Minutemen had died in the same manner on 12.22.85. Vibe magazine would later compare TLC’s large shadow over R&B/urban music and the loss of Lisa Lopes with the impact the Beatles had on rock and roll and the death of John Lennon in 1980. I certainly do not disagree with that assessment one bit.
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Johnny Thunders, one of the godfathers of punk rock, died on this day in 1991.

Thank you, Johnny, for having a major hand in creating the music I love, and helping make a punk rocker out of this Italian boy from Pennsylvania.

Courtesy of Mike Lupica @WMFU.org. Found by Egon.

Stuck In A Pagoda With Motoko Aoyama just passed its 2nd Anniversary mark recently. I didn’t make a big deal about it for several reasons… For one, I didn’t make a big deal last year either, and second, the actual date of this blog’s debut has been lost in the ether thanks to the ineptitude of a hair-metal-oldies-band drummer and his not-so-wonderful web hosting staff. I’m guessing that it was April 8th, 2006 when I started this blog, while at the same time I am tempted to make the “official” date April 11th because last year on that day I got to see The Stooges.

Rather than go through some lengthy bullshit on the past, I thought I’d take a cure from the liner notes of Fatboy Slim’s recent greatest-hits anthology and list some of the things this blog and its author have gone through since I started this project:

Two webhosts (only one of which I recommend, Bluehost)
Three laptops (a 2004 Apple PowerBook G4 until 3.17.08, a Dell Inspiron borrowed from my mother, and my present Dell XPS M1530)
Two iPods
Seven Morning Musume singles (counting “Resonant Blue”)
Seven personnel changes in Morning Musume
Three and a half Morning Musume albums (the “half album” being the 7.5 Fuyu Fuyu EP)
Six Berryz Koubou singles
One and a half Berryz Koubou albums (the “half album” being their misnumbered (3) Natsu Natsu Mini Berryz)
Five C-ute singles (all of their major-label releases)
Two and a half C-ute albums
Six Stooges albums (two of those being the remastered editions of their Elektra albums, another being a 180-gram pressing of Raw Power)
Two Koharu Kusumi albums
Four New York Dolls albums (three of those being vinyl editions of all three studio albums)
Four Puffy AmiYumi albums
Four Mission of Burma albums (three of them being the new vinyl reissues on Matador)
Two Panic! At The Disco albums
Two copies of Flyleaf’s first album (one autographed)
Two autographed Sick Puppies CDs
One guitar autographed by Iggy Pop and the Asheton Brothers
Four books autographed by Henry Rollins
One book autographed by Sen. Arlen Specter
One e-mail from Henry Rollins
Two e-mails from Jello Biafra
Three day trips to New York where I spent over $700 combined in one store (Virgin Megastore) alone
Four visits to Apple Stores where I spent $0 (and wish I had been able to spend several times what I spent at Virgin)
Five day trips to Philadelphia
Two day trips to Syracuse, NY
One Stooges concert
One Bon Jovi concert (goddamn motherfucking fuck!)
Two Flyleaf concerts
Two Evanescence concerts
Two Sick Puppies concerts
One missed Puffy AmiYumi concert (goddamn motherfucking fuck!)
Two 100-count spindles of CD-R’s
Two Palm Treo 680 smartphones
Four SD cards
Two phonograph needles (accidentally broke the first one)
Three disbanded Hello! Project groups
Three new Hello! Project groups (not counting Kira Pika and Milky Way)
Two people parting company with Hello! Project altogether one way or another
One Hello! Project-related project getting released in the States (Yo-Yo Girl Cop)
Six WordPress themes
Four domain names (three for the Pagoda alone, the other for the Reina blog)
Two different Reina Tanaka/Robert Fripp header graphics (Vee improved on the original)
Two years without Ai Kago
One W album that’s gone the way of the original version of SMiLE
One Guns N’ Roses album finally being finished and handed in (whether it gets released may be another story!)
Two knocked-up MoMusus
Two instances where I bitched about Nozomi Tsuji getting knocked up
Three instances where I remarked about what a lucky bastard Taiyo Sugiura is
Three snarky remarks made by me about Avril Lavgine
One snarky remark made by “Reina” about Jamie Lynn Spears
One snarky remark made by me to “Reina” about Beyonce Knowles
Countless snarky remarks about American Idle
Three American Idle contestants losing their recording contracts
Four Reina Tanaka photobooks
One tire
Two illnesses
Two back-to-back NaNoWriMo wins
Three book projects (two simultaneous, one on hold)
One published short story (“The Man In The Hummer” in Deliver Us From Evil, available from Jaded Silence Press)
All three versions of American Wota
One nomination at the IntlWota Awards
Two jokes stolen from Jeff Dunham
One joke stolen from Nothing Nice To Say
Reina Tanaka’s 18th birthday
My 40th birthday
Mike Watt’s 50th birthday
Iggy Pop’s 60th birthday
Several boxes of CD sleeves
Countless mouse and camera batteries
Countless VitaminWaters
Countless instances where I took to heart David Peel’s adage that “fuck” is not a dirty word
A year and a half of lost blog archives (Fuck you, “Vikki Stixx”!)
Not enough trips to Starbucks
More money spent at CDJapan than at Gallery of Sound
More money spent this year on vinyl than CDs
And one girlfriend, since upgraded to fiancée.

For those that wondered why Madonna asked Iggy Pop & The Stooges to play in her stead at the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame last night… here’s your answer: footage from when Madge invited Iggy to open for her in Scotland a few years ago…

If anyone has footage from Iggy & The Stooges’ performance last night (I don’t get VH1 Classic), cough it up!.